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All Human Societies Burn the Heretics
Quillette just published a piece by a French woman, Peggy Sastre, on two scientists, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, who published research showing that men rape because of sexual desire.
They simply remind people that sexual violence has something to do with biology and that ignoring that fact means—at best—misunderstanding the nature of rape and, at worst, harming victims. In the face of such heresy, the outrage machine went into overdrive.
Why? Because you are not allowed to challenge the saving feminist truth that rape is all about the patriarchy projecting its power.
Next day, Quillette published an interview between Peggy Sastre and editor Claire Lehman on the whole question of eliminating scientists who challenge the conventional wisdom. Let me tell you, that Peggy Sastre is quite a piece of work — as, of course, are all French women.
Sastre pointed out that the burning of the heretics — even in Science! — is nothing new. Happens all the time.
So I thought to myself: what is really going on here? Why are heretics all such a problem?
But then I thought: forget thinking about it. Just ask Grok: “why is it that almost all societies punish new ideas -- even scientific ideas -- that go against conventional wisdom?” Grok replied:
Almost all societies—past and present—do punish or suppress new ideas that challenge conventional wisdom because those ideas threaten the core mechanisms that keep the society stable, cohesive, and functional. The pattern is remarkably consistent across cultures and eras (ancient Athens killing Socrates, medieval Church vs. Galileo, Stalin’s Russia vs. genetics, Mao’s China vs. “bourgeois science,” modern cancel culture, etc.).
Then Grok pointed out that:
Conventional wisdom is the social glue
Coordination and trust require conformity
Power protects itself
But we wise ones know that human society must balance stability with creative disruption. You can’t go on doing the same-old same-old forever. Advanced Science, experts agree, is a Good Thing, and it helps us in the eternal struggle of adaptation to the challenges of living on this Earth.
And there’s another thing arguing against burning the heretics.
Because I am so wise I know that advanced thinkers like Jürgen Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action have pointed that out that humans need to keep talking. Grok says that Habermas proposes two basic kinds of human action:
Strategic / Instrumental Action through power, money, efficiency.
Communicative Action through language (speech acts).
Strategic and instrumental action were described in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialetic of Enlightenment. Habermas believes that Horkheimer and Adorno miss the point. Human society does not work from instrumental action but from discussion. That’s why we humans developed language!
Communicative action is oriented toward achieving, sustaining, and renewing consensus through rational discourse, not power, money, or coercion.
I think that it is fair to say that down through most human history there has been an enormous risk in abandoning tried and true practices and trying something new, particularly in the agricultural age.
Thus the experience of the last 500 years, starting with agricultural “improvement” and continuing into the five technological revolutions from machine textiles to electronic communication is a mind-bending break with the past.
And don’t forget that it could all end in tears, as the environmentalists and climate changers tell us every day.
| perm | 11/29/25 2:44 am ET | comments |
After a Lifetime of Reading, I'm Thankful
The whole point of human society seems to be that we all keep on the same wavelength. We all seem to know what is OK and what is NOT OK.
But if you are a guy there is something inside you that wants to take a peek outside the Overton Window.
I think that my first peek occurted in the 1970s when I would read The Wall Street Journal at the office and learned about Austrian economics, starring Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek on the editorial page run by Bob Bartlett. Eventually I learned that there was a connection between Hayek and Margaret Thatcher:
There is a famous anecdote that during a Conservative Party policy meeting, Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, “This is what we believe.”
Ronald Reagan also read the Austrians. We know that because the guy that looked through Reagan’s library after his death discovered hand-written comments in Reagan’s copies of the Austrian economists.
Does it matter? Well, the Austrian economists argued that the Keynesian economics formula, that the way to get out of a recession was with deficits and stimulus spending, does not work. The Austrians said that the way to stimulate the economy was to reduce government spending and lower marginal tax rates.
It’s worth understanding that our Democratic friends still believe in, and practice, the Keynes-inspired deficits and stimulus program. Right now they are going to save the world spending trillions on fighting climate change.
By the 2010s I was seriously studying Kant. But now I boil Kant down to the simple maxim that “we cannot know things-in-themselves but only appearances.”
By 2011 I was reading Horkheimer and Adorno in The Dialectics of Enlightenment and the question of man’s attempt to dominate the planet. The Frankfurt School and critical theory. Critical theory is great, until you use it to blow up the world.
By 2012 I was reading Jürgen Habermas and his notion of communicative action in the “lifeworld.” The world is not about logic and reason but about people living in the same social world and negotiating reality and agreement.
By 2018 I was reading Jordan Peterson and also Carl Jung. By 2019 I was reading Nietzsche.
But one of my foundational beliefs now is what I call the German Turn. By that I mean that Germans invented modern philosophy with Kant, modern psychology with Freud and Jung, modern physics with relativity and quantum mechanics, and modern society as a lifeworld of communicative action. Yes, the Germans just about destroyed themselves with World War I and with Nazism, but just about everything we know and think comes from the Germans. Here is how I described my journey in 2020.
But that was not the end of it all.
It was in 2014 that I first wrote about Curtis Yarvin and his notion of The Cathedral. Then, in 2019, he introduced me to Gaetano Mosca and his notion of the Political Formula, the story that rulers tell us to justify their rule. Then, in 2021, I wrote about Carl Schmitt and his Concept of the Political. Curtis Yarvin makes it Real Simple.
There is no politics without an enemy,
You want to understand our liberal friends? It’s simple. They are going to save the world with politics. But there is no politics without an enemy. So our liberal friends always find themselves fighting a war against an enemy. The enemy could be Billionaires or Oligarchs. Or White Oppressors. It could even be an existential enemy, like climate change. But “there is no politics without an enemy.”
If you don’t like war, then you’d better dial down the politics.
But our liberal friends don’t understand that. They just think they are doing sensible, practical things to fight injustice and make the world a better place. Interestingly, Schmitt lists other ways of interacting with the world. In the economic, we humans judge what is beneficial or harmful; in the moral, we humans judge what is good or evil. Maybe we should try to interact economically and morally rather than politically, dear liberal friends.
I’d say that, by understanding the political and its distinction between friend and enemy, we armed insurrectionists are going to benefit from Sun Tzu’s maxim about understanding yourself and your enemy. Just sayin’.
What does this have to do with Thanksgiving? Not much, except that I am thankful for the thoughts and ideas and understanding about the world that I have picked up over the years. By accidental encounters with other humans and their ideas.
Because all the world’s an accident.
| perm | 11/28/25 1:36 am ET | comments |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Men join the colors; Women adopt the latest fashion.
For men, the cultural is the distinction between ok and not-ok.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: The Reality of Policing
